Denver: Michael Lewis Friday summary

Friday is practice day in Denver for the Shell Grand Prix.

Michael Lewis and the AutoCon Racing team are in Denver for the Shell Grand Prix. Michael called in this report for Friday's practice day. Mostly Michael wanted to talk about the track.

"The track here is narrow and extremely bumpy," Lewis reported. "It is really bad in out Trans-Am cars, so I can't imagine what it is like in one of those CART cars. They must be spending more time in the air than they are on the ground!"

"The track is so narrow and there are so many transition areas from asphalt to concrete and back, that passing will be very, very difficult," Michael said. "That said, qualifying will be extremely important tomorrow."

"Between the bumps and the uneven transition between differing surfaces, it makes it very difficult to judge your breaking properly," Lewis explained. "It isn't even all that easy to make a pass going into the hairpin, which from the map looked like a good passing area. The car is very unsettled there with the bumps and tough barking area. There could be some incidents there during the race."

As for the car and setup, the AmeriSuites Jaguar is running the fuel-injection system. Michael reported that they have the FI system working well and it has a good level of drive-ability. They came to the track using the same setup as they raced with in Washington DC, but that guess wasn't working too well. They softened up the car a lot for the second session and got a lot better. Michael Lewis recorded the fifth fastest time of the second session at 1:14.993.

"Boris was really fast in both sessions," said Lewis. "That isn't all that surprising since Boris likes a soft setup and that seems to work really well here. This track is tailor made for Boris and his team."

Michael reported that everyone has pretty much behaved themselves so far and there weren't, to his knowledge, any serious incidents in any of the Trans-AM sessions. He said that the CART sessions seemed to have a red flag every five minutes. Kinda makes you wonder who the top-level professionals are doesn't it.

"The track here is most similar to Houston," Lewis said. "But, no where as good or as wide. I am very surprised by this since CART is usually very good at setting up these temporary street circuits. This is the worst street course I have even been on as far as the track goes."

"On the positive side, the crowds seemed very large for a Friday," Michael reported. "They seem really into all of this and very enthusiastic. The race ought to be really interesting, so we should put a good show for them. This a track where you have to take chances to go fast. It makes driving the car very uncomfortable! It's gonna separate the men from the boys for sure!"

-mlr-